


Dear Isabella

by Tousled_Sky



Category: Dear Dumb Diary - Jim Benton
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Implied abusive relationships, Intentional Drug Overdose, Lethal Drug Overdose, Other, Suicide, Unhealthy Relationships, drug overdose, suicidal character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 19:01:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11087949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tousled_Sky/pseuds/Tousled_Sky
Summary: I wish I missed you.





	Dear Isabella

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags for this. This is not happy.

Dear Isabella,

  
I wish I missed you. You were my friend since we were, what, five? You were by my side through so much of my life; were such a influence on the person I became (even thought I'm not sure that's such a good thing, now). I have so many memories of you, and a lot of them are good. A lot of them are things that make me smile to look back at.

But now, most of those good memories are overshadowed by the most recent ones. By the last four years I spent with you.

I feel terrible for saying this (or writing it, I guess), but I'm relieved. I don't want to make it sound like I'm glad that you're dead- I'm not. I could never, ever be glad that you're gone, Isabella. 

But I'm relieved. I felt like I was chained to you for these past few years; now it's like this terrible weight has been lifted off my chest. It's replaced with another one, though - I feel bad that you're gone. I don't miss you, but it hurts just as badly that I don't than it would if I did. It's just a different type of hurt.

But, now that you're gone, it's like I can finally start moving forward. It hurt so badly, every day, to be with you - to see you fall apart in front of me and be powerless to help you. And I still hurt, and I probably will for a long time. It was you were a weight at the bottom of the ocean and our relationship was a chain around my ankle that tethered me to you. Now that you're gone, I can start swimming upwards; but it'll still be a long time until I can actually breathe again.

I just wish I could have brought you up from the bottom of the ocean with me. I tried. I swear to God I tried, over and over and over again. But you wouldn't swim - you just sank to the sandy, silty bottom, and brought me with you. And I tried for four years to keep us both afloat, but I couldn't swim hard enough for both of us. 

That was four years of watching the medicine you were taking not work over and over. Four years of seeing the doctors finally find a medicine that "cured" your depression, and then seeing you happy, seeing the medication work. Until it didn't anymore - after a few months, it's like you built up a resistance to it. And then seeing your new prescription and the old one offset one another, and you'd get worse than ever before - like that night we were twenty stories up and you tried to climb over the railing of the stairs. I wrapped my arms around your stomach and begged you to come back. I didn't think you were going to, for a few minutes.

I felt you drag yourself further over the edge and I considered letting go, though I knew there was no way I would. I didn't because I knew if I did, you'd throw yourself over the edge and fall twenty stories to your death. But I considered it because I could feel my body lift so far from the stairs that my toes were just barely brushing the ground - not even supporting my weight anymore, that was done by the railing I was halfway over and that you were almost all the way over. And there was a good chance that you were going to push the rest of the way over, with me holding onto you, and we'd both fall.

You came back that night. You came back and wouldn't talk to me about it, and when I tried to discuss it you got angry - like I had tried to push you, rather than try to save you.

I saved you that night. But in the end, you did die. It wasn't by jumping - no, it was an overdose. You took all the medication in the house and went to sleep, and just never woke up again.

I wish I could have saved you. But the person I want to have saved is the you that you used to be - the Isabella who I loved when we were both just kids, the Isabella with whom I was in a mutually beneficial and healthy relationship. Not the Isabella whose death made me feel relieved.

I wanted so badly for you to get better. And I tried to help - I researched medication, therapists, support groups. But when I suggested these things to you, you got angry at me - saying it wasn't your fault that you were like this and that I should stop trying to make you something you weren't. 

They say you can't change people. And I was trying to- I was trying to change you from ill to well. But the saying is true, because I couldn't change you. You were the only one that could change yourself. I couldn't get better for you, and you didn't seem to want to get better.

More than that, you seemed to actively try to make your situation worse. And it was like you didn't even realize that you were doing it - you would bully and be mean to people, and then complain that you had no friends. You would skip work and play on your phone when you were supposed to be taking inventory, and then call me about how your "bitch boss" fired you. You would accuse your boyfriend of cheating on you with little to no evidence, call him up demanding the password to his Facebook so you could look through his messages, and then think he broke up with you because he was a "shallow bastard" who had a "blond fetish".

You thought it was the world against you. But no, it was more like it was you against the world - you would destroy every relationship you had in your life. You would turn the world against you - it wasn't even you against the world, it was you against you, because you were the only one hurting yourself. And you couldn't even seem to understand that you were the one doing it - you would burn every bridge you possibly could, and then wonder why you were alone.

You burned the bridge between you and I too. But I still crossed it while it was on fire, and swam the moat when the wood fell away, charred and black. I would swim to you for four years, because I loved you and I wanted you to get better. "When I is replaced with We, Illness becomes Wellness", as the saying goes. So I tried for four years to be there for you.

But in the end, I couldn't make you better. It was still only one person putting in effort - it wasn't We. So it never became wellness, because you just lay down and let yourself sink. You accepted this as your lot in life and let it consume you. I wanted you so badly to, as Dylan Thomas puts it, "not go gentle into that good night", but to "rage, rage against the dying of the light".

And I think, in a way, my support helped. It didn't just prolong your life, it helped improve it. There were days, even near the end, that I could get you to smile - but it was just a pale imitation of how you used to smile; like a mirage, an illusion, of happiness. But yet, in a way, I was able to help.  
But god did it tear me apart. My bridge to you was not spared your flames, and by the end of those four trying years, my body was covered in burns from the journey, my lungs filled with water from swimming the moat when the bridge finally crumbled.

I drained your poison from you, but the only place I could put it was within myself. It might have helped you to "vent" to me, but all it did to me was infect me with the sickness you wouldn't even try to get better from. I took care of you instead of myself - I lost my friends, I dropped out of college, I became alienated from my family trying to keep you alive. 

And I'm sorry that you died, Isabella. But it is not my fault. And I'm not saying it's your fault, and I would never say that you deserved it.

But Isabella, you wanted to die; you told me as much every day for four years.

And if there's one thing you always got as the youngest and the only girl in a family of boys, it was what you wanted. 

You wanted to die, and so you did. And me wanting you to live, to get better, to be happy - that didn't change the fact that you wanted to die. And you were the only one who had control over your own life. Or, in this case, your own death.

Your mother is angry with me; she thinks I didn't do enough. Angeline isn't; she knows just how much I did for you. And when I look at gentle Angeline now, I see in her me two years ago; the start of the exhaustion, the start of the sinking. I realize now that I was starting to drag her down because I, too, was sick - I caught what you had, and she offered her support to me. But I put too much pressure on her.

  
But now I can let offer her my support, too- before, I was your crutch and I couldn't support any more weight. And I know the burden won't be as heavy with Angeline, because she'll let me lean on her, too - we'll help each other.

And, her using me as a crutch means that one day she'll be able to walk by herself. Remember back in ninth grade, when she had anorexia? That was a tough few months, but in the end, she stopped starving herself, because she wanted to stop. She wanted to get better.

People keep telling me to forgive you. I don't understand why everyone thinks I'm angry at you; I'm not. Maybe I'll end up being angry at you someday, but now, I'm just sad. Not that you're gone now, but that you were gone for so long before you actually killed yourself. I'm sad that this happened to you. And it's true that you're the one that killed yourself, but I'm not angry at you. I just wish you were here and that you were better.

Angeline think's I'm angry at you for "abusing" me. I don't know if what we had was really abuse - you were a bully, but "abuse" sounds so viscous. I don't disagree with Angeline that you were a bully, though - I didn't really think you were until seventh grade, when Angeline pointed out to me that you were even mean to me, even though I was the one human being on Earth who stood up for you every single day, no matter how mean you were. So yes, you were a bully. 

And maybe you were an abuser. You dragged me down with you, and even though it's true that I could have walked away from you, that doesn't justify your actions. All you gave me was sickness for those four years. You didn't hit me, or manipulate me, but you made me just as sick as you were. And that's why I'm relived you're dead, Isabella. Because now, I'm no longer being poisoned - now I'm able to get better.

  
But, you know what? Even if you were a bully - even if you were abusive - that doesn't mean you deserved to die. And it doesn't mean I hate you for what you did to me. No, Isabella, I love you. I loved you through all four of those years and I love you still and I will love you until the day I die, even if that day has already come for you.

  
I just wish you had loved yourself enough to get better.

  
Your funeral is in a few days. I'm going to burn this letter and throw the ashes onto your casket along with my handful of dirt. Not because I need to forgive you, but I do feel like it'll give me some sort of closure. Bury along with you all the things I can't tell you and wouldn't even if I could.

  
I hope you're peaceful now, Isabella. You need peace after four years of turmoil.

  
I need peace as well, after these four years. And maybe when I finally swim from the bottom of the ocean that you dragged me to, and my head breaks water and I can breathe again, I'll find it. Maybe when I finally can breathe, I'll miss you. I want to miss you, but right now, all I feel is relief.

  
But I do love you, my friend. I always have and I always will. I love you so, so much.

  
Rest peacefully, Isabella.


End file.
